Was in New York city yesterday and stopped at the Heartland brewery at the empire state building.
Sampled their belgian cherry stout and was impressed with it. Does anyone has a recipe that will come close to that. I do both all grain and extract.

I haven't had that beer so I can't help directly, but I'd encourage you to give Belgian stout a whirl. I made one a year or so ago. If you shoot for a gravity in the upper 70's or mid 80's, hop it a little lower than a conventional stout of that size (maybe 50 IBU?) and really indulge yourself in the darker crystal malts you can make a great beer. Mine had lots of chocolate malt and plenty of C-120 and Special B, some Munich, etc. I fermented mine with 3787, but any characterful Belgian yeast oughta give you something pretty intriguing. If it's helpful I can post my recipe, but it's a little messy as I designed it partly to use up odd little piles of leftover grain.

Oh, and if you ever see Hercule Stout from Brasserie Ellezelloise (sp?) it's pretty much the only actual Belgian sout--it's awesome.

OK, here's the recipe, but I've got to apologize for its tremendous inelegance. Right before I got a grain mill, I had all these little piss-ant bags of ground grain left over from other things. This recipe made them go away. That's why it looks asinine. I just looked at what I had, thought it looked like a stout, bought ten pounds of pale malt, and went with the Belgian yeast.

This was an early effort and I didn't keep track of IBU... Duh. I think it probably had 65-ish IBU?

If I had it to do over again (and I might) I'd stick with this yeast which I love. I'd keep roughly that proportion and make-up of roasted grain as it happened to work. I'd consolidate all those crystal malts into something like 1 lb medium Caramunich, and a 1/2 lb each of Special B and Caramunich 90 or 120. And I'd ditch all the bits of wheat and oats and carapils and stuff.

Anyway, it aged into a very rich, caramelly imperial stout with some interesting Belgian spiciness. Tell me what you come up with. Cheers, Jason

Doesn't sound bad. One thing to consider is replacing the Chocolate Malt with Carafa I, in particular the dehusked/debittered Carafa. It might be smoother than the Chocolate Malt. That is a decent amount of roasted malt, however if you like your stouts to have a nice amount of roasted malts then it should turn out great.

I am still learning my Belgian yeasts from drinking Belgian imports, so I have NO idea what would work best on that front. Wyeast 1762 sounds like it would work well in a stout, 1214 might give some banana & clove notes which could work great or not at all depending on what you like in a stout (I could go either way with that one), 3787 sounds like it might work better without being forced to compete against two lbs. of roasted malt, the other strains I am relatively unfamiliar with so cannot really say. I would love to hear how your beer turns out though!

I think you're recipe sounds quite good--there are few rules for this kind of a beer. I'd personally swing a little more toward Carafa and Chocolate and less toward Roast and Black so as to have less competition between roastiness and estery Belgianiness, but that's totally a matter of taste-- your way is just fine. I could also see tossing in another 1/2 lb of some kind of crystal or cara malt just to make sure there's a full enough malt foundation for the blacker stuff.

As for the yeast, who knows? I think Ardennes would be best. 1388 is a terrific yeast too though. I personally am scared to death of 1214. My neighbor made a couple beers with it at relatively modest ferm temps and they have this overwhelming banana thing going on which is very slow to age out. Might be a little garish for this grain bill to my way of thinking. Whatever you choose, I'd make a Belgian pale ale or singel first and pitch on the cake. Either that or have a fat starter.

DoctorDuvel wrote:I'd personally swing a little more toward Carafa and Chocolate and less toward Roast and Black so as to have less competition between roastiness and estery Belgianiness, but that's totally a matter of taste-- your way is just fine.

I actually really like Black Patent and Roasted Barley. However, it might not be too bad an idea to use a gentle hand (maybe using 1/4 lb. or less of the BPM and 1/2 lb. of the Roasted Barley) so that they are not competing. Black Patent is GREAT but you can overdo it pretty easily.

I could also see tossing in another 1/2 lb of some kind of crystal or cara malt just to make sure there's a full enough malt foundation for the blacker stuff.

And balance out the bitterness.

As for the yeast, who knows? I think Ardennes would be best. 1388 is a terrific yeast too though. I personally am scared to death of 1214. My neighbor made a couple beers with it at relatively modest ferm temps and they have this overwhelming banana thing going on which is very slow to age out. Might be a little garish for this grain bill to my way of thinking. Whatever you choose, I'd make a Belgian pale ale or singel first and pitch on the cake. Either that or have a fat starter.

I've never had a beer with Ardennes (that I know of), but have heard great things about it. As for 1214 . . . You might have better luck using recultured Chimay yeast, but if you have the 1214 and want to use it I could see that being an extra step for you that you may not want to try. Still, you don't want to use the wrong yeast and end up hating all five gallons of this stuff.